By Robin G. Jordan
Why am I championing the establishment of a second North
American Anglican province as an alternative to the Anglican Church of Canada
and the Episcopal Church in the USA? Here are five reasons that I believe are
the most important.
Reason #1. I do
not see any evidence of a viable reform movement in the Anglican Church in
North America. The need for reform has been evident since the Common Cause Partnership
days of the ACNA. Those who tried to introduce changes in the draft ACNA
constitution and canons got nowhere. The ACNA’s present leadership has shown
itself to be adroit at keeping the denomination moving in the direction that it
wishes to take the denomination. It has created a system that enables it to limit
input, to orchestrate meetings, to keep opposition to a minimum, and to control
the outcome of the decision-making process. It has resorted to such tactics as
deception, equivocation, intimidation, secrecy, stonewalling, and various
illegalities (i.e. contravention or violation of the provisions of the ACNA constitution
and/or canons) and irregularities.
Reason # 2. The
establishment of a second alternative North American Anglican province would
draw attention to the shortcomings of the Anglican Church in North America. These
shortcomings are extensive. They affect the faith, doctrine, liturgy, and
governance of the province. The establishment of a second alternative North
American province would emphasize not only the extent of the shortcomings but
also their seriousness..
Reason #3. The
establishment of a second North American Anglican province would highlight the
untenability of the GAFCON Primates’ backing of a province that does not fully
accept the authority of the Scriptures and the Anglican formularies and has
only a rhetorical commitment to the Jerusalem Declaration. The rites and
services and the catechism that the Anglican Church in North America’s bishops
have endorsed show that the teaching of the Scriptures are not the supreme
authority in matters of faith and practice for the ACNA’s College of Bishops,
which they are for historic Anglicanism. Unreformed Catholic tradition looms
large in their thinking. Like its reception of the Anglican formularies, the
ACNA’s affirmation of the Jerusalem Declaration is purely cosmetic, designed to
garner the recognition of the GAFCON Primates and the Fellowship of Confessing
Anglicans.
Whether the establishment of such a province might prompt the
GAFCON Primates to reconsider their support of the ACNA, I cannot say. Admitting
an error in judgment might in their estimation make them look foolish and
gullible to other Christian leaders and cost them prestige that they do not
wish to lose. However, the establishment of such a province would expose the
inconsistency of their support of a denomination that does not stand for what
they themselves say that they stand for.
At the second GAFCON conference in Nairobi the GAFCON
Primates and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans made a public commitment to
intervene on the behalf of congregations and clergy excluded by their province
or diocese. But this intervention appears to be restricted in practice to
conservative congregations and clergy excluded by liberal provinces and
dioceses, not evangelical congregations and clergy excluded by Anglo-Catholic–philo-Orthodox provinces and dioceses. The GAFCON Primates and the FCA need to
clarify their position and offer a public explanation of their reason for not
intervening on the behalf of evangelicals. Evangelicals may in turn wish to
re-evaluate their support of the GAFCON Primates and the FCA.
Reason #4. The
establishment of a second alternative North American Anglican province might
create enough disequilibrium in the Anglican Church in North America to give
impetus to the development of a viable reform movement in the ACNA. It might
lead to the implementation of much needed reforms in that denomination. On the
other hand, it might accelerate the entrenchment of
Anglo-Catholic-philo-Orthodox doctrine and practice that the ACNA is presently
undergoing.
One possible development is the more evangelical and
mission-minded element in the Anglican Church in North America might migrate to
the second alternative North American Anglican province, leaving behind the
element who is not satisfied with historic Anglicanism and who wish to
reconstruct the Anglican Church along the lines of the pre East-West Schism
period of the supposedly undivided Church of the eleventh century.
This element dominates the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions
that trace their origins to the short-lived first Anglican Church in North
America. The “extreme form of Anglo-Catholicism,” to use the words of Douglas
Bess, author of Divided We Stand: A History of the Continuing Anglican Movement, to which this element holds
has not benefited these jurisdictions. They are all in various stages of decline.
This ideology, like liberalism, the last 40-odd years has
shown, is spiritually bankrupt. It is not an ideology that is capable of
sparking a church planting movement.
On the contrary, it is more likely to act as a brake upon missions, evangelism,
and church planting.
Without its more evangelical and mission-minded element the
Anglican Church in North America would in all likelihood join the ranks of the
Continuing Anglican jurisdictions.
Reason #5. I see
no future for Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism in the Anglican
Church in North America, much less conservative evangelicalism. Historic
Anglicanism is Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical in its identity. This
identity is based upon Scripture and is reflected in the Anglican formularies: the Book of Homilies, the Articles of Religion, and The Book of Common Prayer
in its 1662 edition.
The Anglican Church in
North America is “liberal” in the sense that the Bible alone does not rule the
denomination. (See Ray Ortlund’s article, “Is Your Church Functionally Liberal?”) It gives unreformed Catholic tradition
a large place in its interpretation of the Bible, its guiding beliefs, and its
decision-making. It treats the Anglican formularies as relics of the past and
listens to other voices.
The Anglican Church in North America makes no room for
conservative evangelicals in the four important areas of faith, doctrine,
liturgy, and governance. Indeed it displays a functional intolerance for those
who stand most in continuity with the English Reformers in their beliefs and
practices.
The ACNA top leaders’ endorsement of a
Anglo-Catholic-philo-Orthodox liturgy and catechism clearly shows that they
have no genuine commitment to a partnership between High Churchmen and Low
Churchmen, Arminians and Calvinists, and cessionists and continuists in the
service of the gospel. Rather they have taken a decidedly partisan stance. The
ideology they are espousing is not faithful to the Scriptures and the Anglican
formularies and is spiritually bankrupt.
Churches that embrace this ideology are not gospel churches.
The message they preach is not the New Testament gospel. Their teaching is not
gospel teaching.
Robin
ReplyDeleteWhy are you so obsessed with Sola Scriptura? The Body of Christ is older than the Bible. The earliest writings are 20 years after our Lord's crucifixion, resurrection, and
ascension. The church decided what was canon in the NT. And the church did not consider these things until 2nd century. Granted the church has been corrupted over the years. What I find amazing is the Reformed tradition which Congregationalism is a part of spawned Unitarianism and then the UUA.
Have you thought about what you are saying? Are you dismissing the Old Testament as a part of the Bible? And the New Testament writers' recognition of Paul's writings as Scripture?
ReplyDeleteYou ignore the role of the Holy Spirit in not only inspiring Scripture but also in authenticating Scripture. As J. I. Packer points out in Concise Theology: Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, the Spirit's witness to Scripture is like his witness to Jesus. The Spirit enlightens "previously darkened minds to discern divinity through sensing its unique impact--the impact in the one case of the Jesus of the gospel, and in the other case of the words of Holy Scripture." Packer goes on to point out that "the result of this witness is a state of mind in which both the Savior and the Scriptures have evidenced themselves as divine"--in such a way that "we no longer find it possible to doubt the divinity of either Christ or the Bible." In this way God authenticates Holy Scripture to us as his Word, not by personal experience, not by human argument alone, nor by the church's testimony alone. The imparting of this witness, "like the imparting of faith in Christ's divine Saviorhood, is prerogative of the Holy Spirit alone."
Unitarianism and Universalism predate seventeenth century Congregationalism. The Ebionites were a Jewish Christian movement that existed during the early centuries of the Christian Era. They recognized Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah but denied his divinity. The early Church Father Origen in his work On First Principles posited that the devil and his angels might be saved and caused a firestorm of controversy. The Arians maintained that the Son of God was a created being and was distinct from and subordinate to God the Father.
In 1640 Convocation passed the Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiasticall including canon IV - Against Socianism - which categorized Socianism - a class of Unitarianism - as "a complication of many ancient heresies condemned by the first four general councils and "contrariant" to the Articles of Religion now established in the Church of England. The Articles of Religion is classified as a Reformed confession of faith.
Socianism is traceable to what is called the Radical Reformation and has its roots in the Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth century.
In the opening decades of the seventeenth century Socian publications circulated among the early Arminians, Remonstrants, Dissenters, and early English Unitarians.
In America, Unitarianism spread first in New England. The first official acceptance of the Unitarian faith on the part of a congregation in America was by King's Chapel in Boston, from where James Freeman began teaching Unitarian doctrine in 1784, and was appointed rector and revised the Prayer Book according to Unitarian doctrines in 1786. Unitarianism enjoyed popularity among the educated and wealthy classes which associated it with deism.
Your attempt to associate the Reformed tradition with Universalism and Unitarianism does not hold water. It is clearly both spurious and specious.
Congregationalism I may add is not exclusively Reformed in doctrine. One of the particular doctrines of Congregationalism is that each congregation decides for itself what it believes, how it worships, and how it is governed.
ReplyDeleteBy the nineteenth century "liberal religion" had made inroads into American Congregationalism to the point that the principle around which a number of congregations were organized was not a set of common beliefs but the person of Jesus Christ.
My grandfather I would also add was an organist and Bible teacher at an English Wesleyan Congregationalist Church. I have done in-depth reading into the Congregationalist tradition myself.
My great grandfather, my maternal grandmother's father, and his family attended both Church and Chapel. He was a school master and his pupils and their families attended the local Church of England parish and the local chapel. The latter might be Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist/Wesleyan, or Presbyterian.
I would further add that you are dodging a main point of my article. In its liturgy and catechism the ACNA discriminates against congregations and clergy that fully accept the authority of the Scriptures and the Anglican formularies, congregations and clergy that stand most in continuity with the English Reformers. This might be the kind of thing that one would expect to experience in one of the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions but not a member province of the Anglican Communion or the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.